Richard E. Grant was (for a time) the official 9th Doctor. The BBC is so large that quite often the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. A few years back, BBCi (the now-defunct internet service of the BBC) got permission to regenerate the Doctor from the 8th (Paul McGann) into REG. What BBCi didn't know was that Russell T Davies (RTD) was making a TV version of the show. REG came online about the same time that Eccleston was announced. So REG was kind of a one-off "unbound" (aka outside continuity). He was only ever in the one story and also he featured in a short story (written.)